Do Your Kids Eat Vegetables?

I don't know about you, but I have the hardest time getting my son to eat vegetables. When he was younger he loved vegetables. Squash, sweet potatoes, yams, green beans, peas, carrots ... you name it, if it came in a glass jar with a Gerber label - he devoured it. He loved vegetables so much that his skin actually turned orange! He was like Rudolph, only he had an orange nose.

Don't believe me ... check out this picture.

Did I overload the vegetables wen he was little? Could that be why he doesn't like them now?

Or maybe it's a texture thing. I know I don't like certain foods simply because of the texture.

Well, I tried sneaking vegetables into his food, I even pureed them. No luck. Then I thought let's just put them in the foods he already likes. I started simple by adding tomatoes into the pasta sauce. Ok, he is eating them. He loves all Italian food, so I thought I would try putting vegetables in the lasagna. Thinly sliced zucchini and spinach. Yeah, that didn't go over to well. "What's the green stuff?"

Recently he started asking for soup and to my surprise he loves vegetable soup! So if he loves the soup in a can, surely he will love homemade soup even more. After a shopping trip together and learning about all the vegetables his class in growing in the school garden, we made our own vegetable soup.

I tried to choose vegetables that I knew he liked - green beans and peas, added some little pasta stars for fun, and then tried to sneak in some other vegetables that I wasn't to sure about. The red bell pepper was diced small enough that he really didn't notice it. The yellow squash was questionable, he ate a few pieces. The zucchini, yeah, not so much. Even though I chopped up the squash and zucchini in small quarters, he didn't care for the texture.

This meal may not have been a total success, but it wasn't a complete failure either.

Don't get me wrong, he does eat some vegetables, but I know he's not getting all the nutrients his growing body needs from peas, green beans, corn on the cob, potatoes, and spinach tortellini.

Do you have suggestions for ways to get children to eat more vegetables? What do you cook with vegetables that your children love?

Leave a comment below and share your ideas. I'm always looking for new recipes to try.